Correct.
(Also, given that it's been over two months since I said that, is there some other reason this just became an issue? Not that there's a time limit on discussions, but "I can't any longer" tends to imply that something else recent is at work.)Instead of the thread disappearing due to inactivity, it is in fact active. So any time there is a new post, I come here. I am reminded of the above post, and each time I feel insulted. I am tired of holding back, and want an explanation.
I don’t know what to explain, because I still don’t understand exactly what I said that’s insulting to you, or why you’re personally insulted by it. I need some more information about what your concerns are.
I mean… Ask me some questions about what I said, and I’ll do my best to answer. Otherwise, I can’t expand on something when I’m still not sure what aspects you think I should be addressing.
Perhaps this discussion needs some hard numbers. I ran some data this morning on every fandom book I could find, looking at the gender of the main character and gender of the author.
I counted 89 books. This list excluded: Graphic novels, anthologies (collections by the same author were included), books not written in/for the fandom (thus no Ratha, no Redwall, etc), books that had both male and female main characters, books where it was not clear (Chains of Silver, Chains of Gold has a trans-male, so I wasn’t sure what to do with that; a few books based on descriptions did not make it the gender of the main character, either), and a lot of M. C. A. Hogarth’s stuff because I couldn’t tell if it was a book or a short story, what collection it appeared in, and didn’t feel like going through every single one - from her, I used Claws & Starships, Blades & Bitter Apples, and Spots the Space Marine. It’s also possible I was wrong about one or two books. I can provide the title, protagonist and author list if anyone asks.
Main characters: 63 books had male protagonists (70.8%), 26 books had female protagonists (29.2%).
Author Gender: 10 books were written by females (11.2%), 79 were written by males (88.8%)
Of the 79 books written by male authors, 18 (20.2%) had female main characters. Of the 10 written by women, 2 (20%) had male main characters. Of the 26 books with female main characters, 18 (68.2%) were written by men, compared to the 8 (30.7%) by women.
Additionally, I measured whether the book was focused as gay erotica or not, under the assumption that a gay erotica would not have a female protagonist because A) that’s counter-productive and B) not the target audience anyways. Gay erotica: Yes: 32 (36%), No: 57 (64%); therefore of the 79 written by men, 40.5% were gay erotica. One author wrote gay erotica There were one or two books which I was not sure whether were gayerotica or not, so were not included.
If we removed the 40% of gay erotica from the list, then we only have 57 total books, 47 books written by male authors. Of those 57 books, female main characters appear in 26 (45.5%), to males 31 (54.5%).
Based on these numbers, it looks like male authors are writing most of the female main characters, and if you exclude gay erotica, female main characters appear almost half the time.
I would just like to add a quick correct to your post from the top of my head. Rukis, who is a woman, wrote Heretic, which arguements could be made that it is a gay erotica. It’s certainly gay, but only small parts of it go into erotic.
Please carry on.
Okay, let’s go back to your original post.
I agree that it's basically a demographic issue -- with the majority of furry writers being male, they're going to be writing from their experiences and tastes, same as any of us do, and the potential pitfalls of writing across gender can be enough to make a writer want to stay where s/he's more comfortable. Add to that, that with the majority of the fandom (and thus readers/buyers) being male, there just isn't all that much incentive to write female protagonists for a furry audience anyway.How do I feel about it? Well, disappointed, of course, and often like it’s just one more way I’m being subtly (or not-so-subtly) told that the furry fandom as a whole doesn’t care about its female members (unless maybe, of course, they’re drawing or writing exactly to suit the majority’s taste). I tend to get a bit ruffled these days when I hear people patting themselves on the back about how diverse and inclusive and welcoming the furry fandom is, when in reality it’s no better than mainstream society, just with different in-groups and out-groups. But that’s probably a separate thread.
Fewer female protagonists is due to
How can you reach the conclusion at point 4 given the three previous points?
Sure, you said the fandom, so it’s not “you personally” but “you as a group”. Yet it’s still as insulting because the message is “unless authors write about this, then they just don’t care about people with this”. And everyone here is an author, so you are talking about us, collectively.
It’s insulting because it implies “If you don’t write about [Person who is X], then you don’t CARE about [people who are x].” It’s insulting because it equates Care with Interest. People write stories about what they’re interested in, what they’re passionate about, what they want to say, or just flat out what ideas they come up with. That doesn’t mean they aren’t sympathetic to the things they don’t write about, or their readers. The stories I write don’t involve poverty, does that mean that I don’t care about my readers who are poor? No, I’m just not interested in it! My focus is on other topics, because those are what I want to write about, those aren’t involved with the ideas for stories I have. It’s not relevant.
But then, I believe that an author gives a character trait x for one of five reasons:
You are right, I even have Heretic down but forgot Rukis is a woman.
Since I forgot to list Rukis as female, then all the data points about female authors needs to be shuffled a point or perhaps a fraction in percentage cases.
Now whether a book is erotica or not is very gray. For simplicity, if the publisher listed it in their adult book section, I counted it as erotica. There are some books I know which have sex scenes (God of Clay, Summerhill) which are still listed in the G section so just used the Publisher’s definitions.
I think you’ve misunderstood me. I’m not stating that if authors don’t write about specific demographics, they don’t care about those people. I’m not blaming or trying to insult furry authors or male furry authors. In other words, the #4 point you’ve listed above was never intended to be a direct logical conclusion from the other 3. It was admittedly something of an emotional tangent (which is why I said it was probably suited for a different thread), just saying that, yeah, it’s a male-dominated fandom, and sometimes it kinda sucks to be a woman in this fandom, and this particular issue can wind up feeling like yet another reminder and aspect of that (even if it’s not intended to be). That’s all I meant, based on my own perspective and experience and observations.
Hopefully that makes things clearer.
I thought that maybe you weren’t saying that, which is why I asked you to explain before I went at it.
I understand now, thank you for explaining, and I apologize for coming down on you.
No problem. Glad to have cleared it up. 
Shifting the topic slightly from female protagonists to female characters in general, I do see problems with the quality of the female characters, main character or side character. There are some books that are utterly devoid of female characters, there are some where they are front and center, but when female characters are present, some authors write them one dimensionally. They either have no character traits, or when they do, their only traits are fairly unflattering. Some authors are more guilty of this than others.
But this is an issue with the larger writing world too, addressed well here.
Good point. Just being present isn’t necessarily enough. Sometimes that’s a peril of male authors writing a different gender and doing it very poorly (either with good intentions but just out of ignorance, or authors writing from their own prejudices)… and then sometimes you have authors who just don’t do all that well with any of their characters regardless of gender.
But this is an issue with the larger writing world too, [url=http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters]addressed well here[/url].
Glad to see that article still making the rounds; it’s well worth reading and considering.
Unless I’ve misunderstood this, I think “male authors are writing most of the female main characters” is a somewhat misleading conclusion. It seems to imply that male authors are more likely to write outside their own gender than female authors. Whereas, these numbers seem to state that male and female authors are equally likely to write outside their own gender (20% in both cases); it’s just that male authors write more of the books.
Correct.
Could you just post it here? That seems like really interesting information.
I can’t seem to find the HTML to make this hidden; sorry.
F = Female, M = Male, MC = Main Character, G = Gay Erotica
Title Protagonist Author Gender Gay Erotica?
Handcuffs and Lace, F MC M
Whisper of Wings F MC M
Beyond Hallowed Walls M MC M G
Volle M MC M G
Transcending Hallowed Walls M MC M G
Within Hallowed Walls M MC M G
Trevor’s Tricks M MC M G
Mysterious Affair of Giles F MC M
Bridges M MC M G
Out of Position M MC M G
Divisions M MC M G
Isolation Play M MC M G
Fangs of Ka’ath F MC M
Dangerous Jade M MC M
Claws and Starships F MC F
Blades Bitter Apples F MC F
Beautiful World M MC F
Smiley and the Hero M MC M
Save the Day M MC M
Found one Apocalypse M MC M
God of Clay M MC M
The Silver Circle F MC M
Otters in Space F MC F
Common and Precious F MC M
Otters in Space 2 F MC F
Flight of the Godkin Griffon F MC F
Indigo Rain F MC M
Tales of Perissa vol 1 F MC M
Sixes Wild F MC M
Tales of Perissa vol 2 F MC M
Pile M MC M G
Deathless M MC M
Lifeless M MC M
Summerhill M MC M
The Seventh Chakra M MC M
The Peculiar Quandary M MC M
of Simon Canopus Artylei
Prince of Knaves M MC M G
Sarin Barneby and the M MC M G
King’s Gambit by Alflor Aalto
Stories from Elton High M MC M G
The Hero M MC M G
Science Friction M MC M G
Green Fairy M MC M
Red Devil M MC M G
Fangs of Ka’ath 2 F MC M
Foxforce A F MC M
Foxforce B F MC M
Foxforce C F MC M
Foxforce D F MC M
Cry Havok F MC M
All Alone at Night M MC M
Bait and Switch M MC M
Black Dogs 1 F MC F
Black Dogs 2 F MC F
The Jackal Queen M MC M
By Sword and Star M MC F
Evolutionary Action M MC M
Freedom City M MC M
Manifest Destiny M MC M
Piggy Moto M MC M
Resisting Arrest M MC M
White Crusade M MC M
A Single Quivering Note M MC M
All Tied up in KNots M MC M G
Basecraft Cirrostratus M MC M G
Everybody Loves Luthor M MC M G
Exposure M MC M G
Heretic M MC M (author note, error) G
In the Doghouse of Justice M MC M G
Jake’s List M MC M G
Pendant of Fortune M MC M G
Prisoner’s Release M MC M G
Seeing Spots M MC M G
Shadow of the Father M MC M G
That Old Time Religion M MC M
The Goldenlea M MC M G
The Species of M MC M G
Blessing Avenue
Waterways M MC M G
Weasel Presents M MC M G
When Summer Wakes M MC M
Winter Games M MC M G
Scars F MC M
Black Iron M MC M
The Iron Star M MC M
Streets of His City M MC M G
The Mystic Sands M MC M
Chronicles of Jayden 1 M MC M
Chronicles of Jayden 2 M MC M G
Spies in their Midst M MC M G
Spots the Space Marine F MC F
This list excluded: Graphic novels, anthologies (collections by the same author were included), books not written in/for the fandom (thus no Ratha, no Redwall, etc), books that had both male and female main characters, books where it was not clear (Chains of Silver, Chains of Gold has a trans-male, so I wasn’t sure what to do with that; a few books based on descriptions did not make it the gender of the main character, either), and a lot of M. C. A. Hogarth’s stuff because I couldn’t tell if it was a book or a short story, what collection it appeared in, some had Neuter Gendered MCs and I didn’t feel like going through every single one - from her, I used Claws & Starships, Blades & Bitter Apples, and Spots the Space Marine. It’s also possible I was wrong about one or two books.
The criteria for “What is gay erotica” is what is listed as adults only by the publishers. Exception is Rabbit Valley, as I did not notice any indicators, and for some (like Spies in their Midst), I had to guess.
List of books I’m missing: Books by Bernard Doove, “Argo” by Rick Griffin and the books by Royce Day. The other books by Rukis.
I may be misremembering, but I thought that Beautiful World was split between two male protagonists.
Most of Bernard Doove’s stories feature chakats as main characters, and they’re herms, so they’d be hard to factor into this list. A couple of exceptions are Jazmyn and Life’s Dream, both of which center around the relationship between a male and a female character. For that matter, in stories like that, how do you decide which of the two is the protagonist, especially in cases where the story switches viewpoint characters (hopefully in different chapters or scenes; otherwise the writer has committed the sin of head-hopping)? It’s been a couple of years since I read Handcuffs and Lace and my recollection is that the male and female lead are of about equal importance, but Rechan wrote it and if he says the female is the protagonist I’ll take his word for it.
I was also reminded of something Fred Patten said in his review of The Streets of His City: “Aside from the first-page off-stage mention of Natier’s mother, there is not a single female in the book.” I haven’t read this book but I did read The Prince of Knaves and noticed the predominance of male characters.
I remember that too, and being… well, “surprised” isn’t strong enough and “shocked” is too strong. Taken aback, perhaps, just because I wouldn’t have thought it even possible to write something book-length with no characters of the opposite sex depicted, not even in minor roles – unless maybe it was set in a purely single-gender environment like a convent or a boys’ boarding school or something. But I haven’t read any of the author’s work, so to be fair, Fred’s review is all I have to go on.
I made it half way through Elton High and found the female characters to be either cardboard or worse, the main antagonists. The second half of the book seems to have a male as a main antagonists, but female characters lack even more. Very male dominated.